Eight questions for customer knowledge management in e‐business

Customer knowledge is an important asset for all businesses. The rhetoric of e‐business emphasises the opportunities for knowing customers in the digital economy. This article sets the context with a brief summary of the key characteristics of the knowledge management paradigm. This is used as a platform for the formulation of the questions that form the core of this article: What customer knowledge do businesses require? What customer data can be collected? What are the challenges for translating data into information and knowledge? Can knowledge cultures be created in online customer communities? Whose knowledge is it anyway? How can knowledge assets be identified and managed in virtual organisations? How can customer knowledge from e‐business be integrated with customer knowledge from other channels? Who needs customer knowledge anyway?